


an endless and useless list of drugs

by flojo



Category: Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: Angst, M/M, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Pacific Rim Uprising Spoilers, fluff...?, im SORRY this movie broke me, just punch me, like in the beginning, maybe so, the picture hermann has......kill me, there is no happy ending, this is kinda cute......
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-29
Updated: 2018-03-29
Packaged: 2019-04-14 14:26:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,012
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14137920
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flojo/pseuds/flojo
Summary: newton is a mess; a tornado, wandering without guidance and wrecking everything in sight. hermann kind of loves him for it.





	an endless and useless list of drugs

Newton is a mess; a tornado, wandering without guidance and wrecking everything in sight. It’s like a visual of the inside of his brain and his personality. Their lab is soiled, and Hermann doesn’t even realize he can walk by it with ease until Newt accidentally drops a mug because it contained some gross mixture (he thought it was coffee) and aims to leave it there until he steps on a shard of it and makes some other part of his body bleed.

The nosebleeds occur often. Even when it’s not from drifting with a Kaiju brain, sometimes it just happens for no reason and Newt doesn’t even really panic about it. Hermann gets worried about that and all the bloodstains permanently embedded in his work shirts (he’ll never properly scrub them out, Hermann knows, and maybe he thought of just doing it himself but Newt, strangely enough, pulls the look off). He learns to work around it, like the constant state of their lab.

Sometimes when it’s calm in the lab and Newton hasn’t spoken for an impressively long time, he enjoys blasting Sex Pistols. It starts at the worst time, when Hermann is seriously invested in his work, and he doesn’t understand how Newt can continue working with so much noise, but he works with Newt every day and has learned to deal with the incessant jabbering from him. And it’s only happened once, but Hermann finds himself tapping his fingers to the beat, just for a moment, before he stops in case Newt notices. 

He does notice, and Hermann wonders if Newt has eyes in the back of his head. He prods happily at Hermann’s “newfound love” for Sex Pistols, turns the music up, and even asks to dance. He’s not sure how they’re expected to dance to something brash like this, but Newt redraws his extended hand before Hermann can even smile at the gesture. For the next hour Newt doesn’t open his mouth unless he’s singing (he enjoys that more than the actual music).

 

When Newt leaves Hermann didn’t expect to feel so empty. There was barely a warning, only the mention of a job position that would probably be better than a stuffy lab and Hermann questioned if he was the reason it’s suffocating Newt. He’s gone by the next week and the lab is too clean. It’s like Newton was never here.

So he pins a picture of them to his corkboard and hopes staring at it instead of working will fill whatever part of himself he’s suddenly missing. It’s the only part of Newt he doesn’t like, and he’s not just saying that to convince himself he hates Newton. It’s far from that. Hermann didn’t know working around Newton’s quirks meant loving all of it and, inevitably, loving Newt for everything that he is and nothing less.

 

One of Hermann’s favorite parts of Newt is how he’s unapologetically himself when he comes back, even if there’s a fancy suit to replace the bloodstains and bunched up sleeves. Hermann was too excited to find that out, the slightest bit of hope filling him. And when they reconnect it’s like Newt never left, and he’s rambling about something with his job and Hermann just smiles because it’s perfect. Even if Newt doesn’t deliberately visit to see him again, there’s still that connection between them that never ceased to exist, even if an invisible string between them was pulled miles apart.

Maybe Newton still does try to make time for him, or that’s what Hermann assumes when he lets his mind wander at the thought of them having dinner together and who the hell is Alice? But everything crashes when Newt disagrees with him and runs off like it’s nothing, and there’s no bickering like they used to do and perhaps the connection was just a false hope.

 

There’s not much to hold on to anymore, but they’re together again and it doesn’t take an entire year to reunite, and Hermann just wants to hug Newt so he does and it’s so warm and inviting even if it’s not really being reciprocated but he’s too thrilled to care and maybe he lets that tiny spark ignite and take over his thoughts even though they have important work to do-

Maybe he still sees the good in Newt even when he tells him about ending the world. Because there is still good in him, because he knows this isn’t the man he knew that he fought with over stupid things and ideas and this isn’t the man that grinned at him brightly when they saved the world, but he’s in there somewhere. 

Hermann just knows it.

And he tells Newt that, matter-of-factly, because this isn’t right and they need to fix this before anything seriously terrible happens and he just wants Newton back; to take him away from this awful place that turned him into an entirely different person and put him back together and where he belongs, in their lab so he can make a mess of everything and they can argue or something and then forget about it after half an hour. This isn’t what home feels like.

This isn’t warm, is what goes through Hermann’s mind when Newt’s hand is around his neck. This isn’t you. The touch is burning him and he can’t really breathe and he knew this whole thing was a bad idea from the start but god, he’d do it again and again if it got him in a better place. This is rock bottom for them.

 

Now he’s not entirely sure where Newton is, and he tries to make that the least of his worries, but he just can’t right now. Not until he knows he’s safe, or at the very least, not dead. 

Hermann still loves him, allows himself to do so because he knows there’s no way he can just put this feeling on hold, and the thought of Newt coming back and redeeming himself makes him hold on a little longer. Even if it takes another year.

**Author's Note:**

> hermann and newt are like romeo and juliet and the kaiju brain is like the dragon that kept them apart
> 
> tumblr for more newmann shitposts among other things : ouijabrain


End file.
